Jeneva Rose stormed the book world in 2020 with the arrival of her psychological thriller The Perfect Marriage. The twist-filled debut sold multimillions of copies, but was just the beginning for this publishing powerhouse. Her page-turning thrillers combined with her hilarious and compulsively watchable TikTok’s skyrocketed her to the top of the book world, and in five years, she’s become unstoppable.
Her tenth book, The Perfect Divorce, brings her full circle—serving as a gripping sequel to her breakout debut. We were thrilled for the chance to chat with Jeneva about her skyrocketing career, the return to her groundbreaking story, life on the precipice of motherhood and, of course, Scott.
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Returning to The Perfect Marriage
After releasing standalone thrillers and dipping into the romance genre, Jeneva has returned to the story that launched her whirlwind writing career. The pulse-pounding tale follows Sarah Morgan, a successful lawyer married to Adam, a writer struggling to reach his potential. What she doesn’t know is that Adam has been cheating on her. Everything comes to light when her husband’s mistress is discovered murdered in their lake house. Acting as his lawyer, Sarah must navigate the lies and her new reality as she attempts to defend her philandering husband from murder charges.
After the shocking conclusion, Jeneva is opening the door to all the questions left unanswered and spinning a new narrative filled with more deceit and destruction. So we asked her if she always had a sequel in mind for this mind-blowing book.
***SPOILER ALERT: If haven’t read The Perfect Marriage.***
“For most of my books, I have ideas for sequels if I think they can continue. For The Perfect Marriage, I actually had a write up for a sequel after I wrote that book. […] But I always had the catalyst of how to open it up, which was that third set of DNA in The Perfect Marriage that not everyone knew who it belonged to. And I was like, okay, if that got exposed, clearly that would open up the case.
But I did not want to write The Perfect Divorce until I had a reason for it to be open for the characters. Like what more do readers need to learn about Sarah Morgan and her character growth and what’s going to happen in this story?”
Jeneva wasn’t willing to just write the sequel for the sake of following up a successful debut. She wanted the next book to deliver just as the first one did, so she sat with it until she found that hook.
“I really wanted to make sure I had something that I was proud of and that I was like, ‘this is going to be great. People are going to love this.’ I think it’s truly shocking. It’s got great reveals and everything pulls together.”
Above all else, she wanted this book to be just as thrilling for readers as the first, but to stand on its own in a unique, fresh and exciting way.
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“I did not want it to be just a retelling of The Perfect Marriage with a new husband. And I know from the synopsis, it seems that way, but it’s not. This one is more of a cat-and-mouse game with another perspective, which is law enforcement, Sheriff Hudson. You get his [perspective], and so it’s kind of like this web they’re all in, and it’s closing in on Sarah and Bob, and it’s like, who’s going to get out of that web?”
Twists and Morally Gray Characters
Every reader knows that thrillers rely on characters you’re not sure if you can trust and a great twist. But what comes first? A sinister MC or a jaw-dropping reveal? We were dying to know.
“I definitely start with like the main twists because… I have to. A thriller in this day and age hinges on a twist. Readers want to be fooled, they want to be tricked, they want something that’s going to make their jaw drop. And so I won’t write the book until I have a major twist, but a lot of the reveals will come out during writing sprints.”
She notes that the shock will depend on how experienced a thriller reader is. Some trained eyes may be able to pick up on the clues along the way, but if social media and book reviews have anything to say, people were floored by the ending. The ideal result for any thriller.
But the other part we love in this genre is the shady behavior of the characters who have questionable motives and behavior. Dubbed “morally gray” characters, it’s sort of a prerequisite for any suspense novel, but when asked how she goes about creating these ethically complex characters, Jeneva had this to say:
“I feel like everyone is morally gray, obviously not to the extent of some of my villains or antagonists I write, but I think that’s very human to not be inherently good or inherently bad. And I think sometimes we do the wrong things for the right reasons. Or the right things for the wrong reasons. I like writing characters that have their own moral code. And I think it’s really fun if you develop a character and you get to see all angles of them. It’s easy to root for the bad guy when you feel like you know them and you start to understand their moral compass as to why they’re doing things and you’re like, ‘yeah, they should be able to, you know, defend themselves or no one should be able to take advantage of them or sure you should kill that person.'”
She jokes about how looking for these edges and angles has made it hard to enjoy a movie, teasing that she’s always prodding her husband, Drew–a regular in her TikToks and at her events–to see if he’s figured out the ending yet. But her mind constantly dissecting the ins and outs of thrillers is what has landed her here.
The Adaptation of The Perfect Marriage
In 2020, The Perfect Marriage was optioned for film and by October 2022, director Sigal Avin (Losing Alice) was announced and the script placed into the hands of Oscar-nominated scribe William Broyles (Apollo 13 and Cast Away).
So we took the opportunity to ask Jeneva where the adaptation stood.
She explained that she was supposed to see the first version of the script last month, but hadn’t received it yet. She jokes that her biggest fear is that it will be one of the rare books where the movie is better, but quickly laughs it off and talks excitedly about seeing her story on screen.
“Obviously I want it to be good. It’s a different medium so [movies] stand on their own. I want it to be good for that medium and I’m just excited to see a story of mine play out in a different medium. A book can’t be told the exact same for film or television. They have to remove things, they have to add things. So that’s always really fun to see.”
When asked if she had any casting hopes in mind, she had just one.
“Sarah Morgan’s the most pivotal character and she needs a very strong actress to play her. So, for her, I picture Margot Robbie. It is a pipe dream but that’s who I picture.”
We will all collectively put this wish out into the universe.
TikTok and Live Events
For many, discovering Jeneva didn’t start with her books. It started with TikTok. With over 800K followers, she’s reached the top tier of social media status in the publishing world and for good reason. Her hilarious takes on everyday life and her comedic honesty about her career leaves followers dying to know more and to experience the books she talks about. From her dog to her husband to her pregnancy announcement and, of course, her interactions with a cantankerous reader named Scott, she’s written the playbook on how authors can interact with their audiences on this platform.
Inviting us into her life and into the publishing world, whether you’re a writer, a reader or a casual lurker, it’s impossible to look away from her honest, laugh-out-loud experiences.
“I wanted readers to be able to get to know me and then they would be able to pick up things in my books that are inside jokes or just my humor or something that maybe they’ve seen on social media or my personal life. And that’s been really fun for people to pick those out. And I feel like being able to get to know my readers and my readers to get to know me makes this career more enjoyable, in a sense. Because so much of it is just me sitting at my desk alone inside my own head. So it’s nice to come outside of my own head and interact with real people.”
And the fun doesn’t stop online. Her live events have the same level of hilarity and excitement. Often involving the audience being in on the joke, her fans have started a culture all their own.
“Before I ever became an author back when I was just a reader or I was an aspiring author, never knowing if I was going to be published, I would go to author talks or author things and I always knew that if I ever got to be in front of people and people coming out and spending their night with me talking about a book, I wanted it to be entertaining”
And entertain she does. It seems almost exclusively. But her public facing persona isn’t an act. It’s just Jeneva.
“When people meet me at my events, they’re like, ‘oh my God, you’re exactly who you are online.’ And I was like, ‘it would be too much work to fake it.'”
She’s as endearing and funny during a casual conversation as she is in front of a room full of people or an online audience of thousands.
No Slowing Down
Pregnant with her first child, she seems to have more going on than ever. You can catch Jeneva sneaking into bookstores signing her novels, going on tour and producing at a prolific pace.
In the midst of releasing her tenth book in half as many years, she is outpacing all industry standards for publication. And it doesn’t stop with The Perfect Divorce. At the request of her dad–another adorable character in the cast of endearing people in her personal life–she’s written a romance book set in the zombie apocalypse.
“Literally he showed up at my One of Us is Dead event in 2022 with a sign that said ‘Jeneva Rose, will you please write me a zombie killer thriller?’ Cause he doesn’t know genres of books. So, I came up with an idea for a zombie book.”
With a team full of trusting editors, they told her, “if you’re excited, we’re excited”. Just recently, she shared the cover reveal. Thus, Dating After the End of the World was born.
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“It’s enemies-to-lovers, so you know, a lot’s going on. But it’s every genre mashed into one. It’s horror, it’s thriller, it’s adventure. I just call it unhinged.”
But wait, there’s more. Jeneva is planning a sequel to Dating After the End of the World, as well as working on a more straight-forward horror called The Grass is Always Bloodier, slated for Fall 2026.
Aside from simply being a joy to watch, what Jeneva Rose’s platform has done is create an audience of Jeneva fans eager to devour anything she puts out. This has given her a fluidity in her publishing career that is often frowned upon by industry insiders. Tradition would dictate that an author stick to a genre and build a brand on that. But Jeneva is the brand and her readers go wherever her unstoppable mind takes them.
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